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A Tribute to David Kelly
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The veteran actor David Kelly died in Dublin earlier this week, after a short illness. He was 82 years old. Born in Dublin in 1929, and educated at Synge Street Boys School, Kelly started his acting career at the age of eight at Dublin’s Gaiety Theatre but he also trained as a calligrapher and was a talented watercolour artist.
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Following a successful stage career in Dublin, Kelly became a familiar face to British television audiences in the 1960s and 1970s, playing eccentric Irish characters in popular sit-coms such as Oh Father, On the Buses and Never Mind the Quality Feel the Width. In 1975 he played a memorable role in John Cleese’s classic Fawlty Towers, playing the part of the useless builder O’Reilly, who was unable to follow the simplest instruction. Kelly often remarked that he had performed on stage for more than 50 years but his nine minutes of screen-time in Fawlty Towers made his face recognisable all over the world. Kelly would go on to play the part of one-armed kitchen-porter Albert Riddle in another popular sit-com, Robin’s Nest, appearing in more than 50 episodes. For Irish audiences, he was perhaps best remembered for his indelible portrayal of the tramp Rashers Tierney in RTÉ’s 1980 mini-series Strumpet City, based on a novel by James Plunkett.
Kelly’s first film credit came with a supporting role opposite Rod Taylor and Julie Christie in Jack Cardiff’s 1965 biopic Young Cassidy, about the early career of playwright Sean O’Casey. Two years later, he appeared in Joseph Strick’s controversial adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, opposite his great friend Milo O’Shea. He would go on to appear in more than fifty films, including Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job, Mike Newell’s Into The West and Kirk Jones’ 1998 comedy Waking Ned, in which he performed a nude scene on a motorbike at the age of 70, earning a Screen Actors Guild nomination.
Other notable film roles include Pat Murphy’s Anne Devlin, Kieron J Walsh’s Beckett adaptation Rough for Theatre I and David Blair’s con-man comedy Mystics, which reunited him with Milo O’Shea. In later years, Kelly was much in demand as a sprightly, older character actor, playing roles in Peter Howitt’s Laws of Attraction and Matthew Vaughan’s Stardust. He took a major role in Tim Burton’s 2005 remake of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, playing Grandpa Joe opposite Freddie Highmore and Johnny Depp, and played a villain, for the first time, in one of his last roles in David Muzon’s 2006 thriller The Kovak Box.
In a career spanning five decades on stage, television and the cinema screen, David Kelly won many awards and acknowledgements for his work, including the American Helen Hayes theatre award, an ESB Theatre Award in 2003 and an Irish Film and Television Academy lifetime achievement award in 2005.
Renowned for his vivacious wit, gentlemanly manners and dapper bow-ties, David Kelly was a gifted actor with an extraordinary range and an innate sense of comic timing.
